Abstract

In the Syracusan embassy scene (Hdt. 7.153–63), both the Spartan and the Athenian envoys invoke the epic past to buttress their claims to the chief command; against this, Gelon pits the youthful vigour of his recent superpower, calling his army the "spring of Greece." However, intertextual links undermine the claims of all three and evoke the later fights for hegemony. This analysis sheds light on the way Herodotus uses the widespread juxtaposition of the Trojan and Persian Wars and helps to assess the relation of his Histories to non-historiographical genres.